What about poor Tuvalu?
"Dear Mr. President, there are too many states these days. Please eliminate three. I am NOT a crackpot. "
Bold = yeah, good luck with that.
Italics = maybe they wouldn’t mind that much (no enmity), but they already reprinted their money once!
Pakistan/Bangladesh, I’m not sure how much they hate each other these days.
Not a country, but they could join with Cocos (Keeling) Islands to become .cc.tv
Ireland (or Scotland)+Norway, to start a new Viking empire.
Japan+Germany - Weirdpornistan
The problem is that neighbouring countries with close cultural ties are often the countries which would most object to unifying into one. Anyone who grew up with a sibling would understand that you often argue the most with the one who is closest to you.
Language is a huge issue. Often linguistic minorities fight independence campaigns, so I think it’s a bad idea to lump people together who speak dissimilar languages.
San Marino-Italy could work. The Vatican is not a member of the UN, so it can stay separate.
Finland suffered for centuries under Swedish domination, Iceland under Danish, and Norway under Danish then Swedish, so perhaps better pairings would be
Norway-Iceland
Sweden-Denmark (the Oresund Bridge makes this more practical)
Finland-Estonia (the languages are similar and very different from the Scandinavian ones)
Other unions that make sense to me:
[ul]
[li]France-Monaco[/li][li]Andorra-Spain[/li][li]Romania-Moldova[/li][li]Panama-Costa Rica[/li][li]Greece-Cyprus (the majority of Cypriots speak Greek, not Turkish)[/li][li]Switzerland-Liechtenstein[/li][li]Germany-Austria[/li][li]Luxembourg-Belgium (Belgium-Netherlands is problematic, because the Waloons will fight it and France-Belgium would be opposed by the Flemish)[/li][li]Ireland-Malta (both Catholic, both have English as one of the official languages, both are in Europe. UK-Ireland could never work for reasons that should be obvious.)[/li][li]Turkey-Azerbaijan (would piss off Armenia to no end but I see no other reasonable mate for Turkey)[/li][li]Suriname-Netherlands (both speak Dutch; Suriname’s independence was achieved without violence, so there is hope the reintegration could be nonviolent)[/li][li]Russia-Belarus (Belarus is probably more similar to Russia in outlook than any other former Soviet Republic[/li][li]Ukraine-Poland [/li][li]Slovakia-Czech Republic [/li][li]Portugal-Brazil (the dissolution of the Empire in the 1820s was effected with little violence and relations are good today)[/li][li]US-Canada[/li][li]The UK could reunite with one of its former colonies in the Caribbean I suppose[/li]Israel-Singapore. (I don’t see any other good option for Israel except the US whose most obvious match is Canada)[/ul]
Israel - we’d be happy to join with Micronesia. The two countries already get along swimmingly; Micronesia would profit from increased Israeli attention and investment, while Israel would be able to preserve its vaunted independence.
Australia and New Zealand could never amalgamate…there’d be be too much blood shed over rugby games, let alone those netball nutjobs.
Sorry…
Nah, Spain+Andorra… there isn’t the bad blood that there is with Portugal.
In case you think I’ve gone nuts I was inspired by various fascinating ideas to make the UK and France effectively one country, most recently during the Suez Crisis and also WWII;
[/QUOTE]
Hijack: There was time in the middle ages when most of modern day France and UK were technically united under one house. Angevin Empire - Wikipedia
I don’t think Swedish speaking Finns would agree wholeheartedly. And as an extra, Estonians, at least those who live along the Gulf of Finland and watch Finnish TV, can understand Finnish, but it’s not mutual. Estonian is, as far as I understand, for historical reasons closer to the Finnish spoken in Northern Sweden than to Finnish in Finland.
That is what Finns want to believe. Although the centre of the realm was Stockholm (really it wasn’t, the court moved around and stayed here and there for some time) present day Finland was just the Eastern part of the country. The idea of nation states based on language etc is a very modern concept. Before the Vienna Congress this was a non-issue.
In my opinion Norway and Sweden would be natural partners. We have much more in common than either of us has with Denmark.
Tuvalu is a country - it’s been independent of the UK since 1978. Scotland, on the other hand, is not a nation state, so it’ll have to be Ireland joining with the Norwegians to loot and pillage.
I would split up Belgium in three parts across the 3 languages, Dutch part into the Netherlands, French part into France and the small german area into Germany.
Still pair Suriname with the Netherlands
Can the UK join with Denmark? They mostly speak great English and often come out tops for ‘happiest citizens’. And they make great telly. Not sure what we would give them in return… better bacon?
Despite the sniggering at the back, I think UK+Ireland could work as culturally we’re right on top of each other - heck, most of us are related - provided we shifted the capital to, say, Cardiff. And maybe make Michael Higgins King (he’s so adorable).
Until the aliens who are able to cross interstellar distance tell you that you are going to join with Gabon and that’s final!!!
For Pakistan, my preferred choice would be South Africa. We can play cricket more or less year round.
I doubt that Monaco+France would work since micro states probably won’t want to merge with large countries, so I guess it would end up with something like Monaco+San Marino.
I wouldn’t mind France merging with Germany, but they probably wouldn’t want us, and we probably would end up pairing with Italy.
“I’ll be deep in the cold, cold, ground before I recognize Missouri!”
Japan + Germany isn’t a bad idea. I doubt any of Japan’s Asian neighbours would be interested.
Jamaica + the Netherlands; would make the most chilled out nation on Earth.
Any ideas on the two big boys, China and India? Other nations would be loath to be in such a minority and I could see both demanding to be the one exception.
well less if you’re gay
South Africa would naturally absorb Lesotho, which is completely surrounded and already has an annexationist movement. We could also absorb Swaziland, which is mostly surrounded, and solve the odd-one-out problem.
I propose the new country of Trinidad, Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, although the new nation may be immediately thrown into civil war between the Oxford and non-Oxford comma factions.
Won’t someone think of Puerto Rico! (I suppose they could find someone nearby that they’re on good terms with. Anyone have a good candidate?)
+1.
Portugal and Brazil
Nepal and Bhutan
Mongolia and Hungary (two countries united by a heritage of bloodthirsty conquering hordes)